 Chapter 19, Part 2 of a Diary from Dixie. February 29. Trying to brave it out. They have plenty, yet let our men freeze and starve in their prisons. Would you be willing to be as wicked as they are? A thousand times no. But we must feed our army first, if we can do so much as that. Our captives need not starve if Lincoln would consent to exchange prisoners. But men are nothing to the United States, thanks to a throw away. If they send our men back they strengthen our army, and so again their policy is to keep everybody and everything here in order to help starve us out. That too is what Sherman's destruction means, to starve us out. Young Brevard asked me to play accompaniments for him. The guitar is my instrument, or was, so I sang and played to my own great delight. It was a distraction. Then I made eggnog for the soldier boys below and came home. Have spent a very pleasant evening. Begone, dull care, you and I never agree. Ellen and I are shut up here. It is rain, rain, everlasting rain. Because our money is worthless, are we not to starve? Heavens, how grateful I was today when Mrs. McClain sent me a piece of chicken. I think the emptiness of my larder has leaked out. Today Mrs. Monroe sent me hot cakes and eggs for my breakfast. March 5th. Is the sea drying up? Is it going up into mist and coming down on us in a water spout? The rain it raineth every day. The weather typifies our tearful despair on a large scale. It is also lint now, a quite convenient custom for we, in truth, have nothing to eat. So we fast and pray and go dragging to church like drowned rats to be preached at. My letter from my husband was so, well, what in a woman you would call heartbroken, that I began to get ready for a run up to Charlotte. My hat was on my head, my traveling bag in my hand, and Ellen was saying, which umbrella, ma'am? Stop, Ellen, said I. Someone is speaking out there. A tap came at the door, and Mrs. McClain threw the door wide open as she said in a triumphant voice, permit me to announce General Chestnut. As she went off she sang out, Oh, does not a meeting like this make amends? We went after lunch and to see Mrs. Monroe. My husband wanted to thank her for all her kindness to me. I was awfully proud of him. I used to think that everybody had the air and manners of a gentleman. I know now that these accomplishments are things to thank God for. Father O'Connell came in, fresh from Columbia, and with news at last. Sherman's men had burned the convent. Mrs. Monroe had pinned her faith to Sherman because he was a Roman Catholic. But Father O'Connell was there and saw it. The nuns and girls marched to the old Hampton house, Mrs. Preston's now, and so saved it. They walked between files of soldiers. Men were rolling tar barrels and lighting torches to fling on the house when the nuns came. Columbia is but dust and ashes burned to the ground. Men, women and children have been left there homeless, houseless, and without one particle of food, reduced to picking up corn that was left by Sherman's horses on picket grounds and parting it to stay their hunger. How kind my friends were on this my fate day. Mrs. Rutledge sent me a plate of biscuit, Mrs. Monroe, nearly enough food supplies for an entire dinner, Mrs. McClain, a cake for dessert. Ellen cooked and served up the material happily at hand very nicely indeed. There never was a more successful dinner. My heart was too full to eat, but I was quiet and calm. At least I spared my husband the trial of a broken voice and tears. As he stood at the window, with his back to the room, he said, Where are they now, my old blind father and my sister? Day and night I see her leading him out from under his own roof-tree. That picture pursues me persistently. But come, let us talk of pleasanter things. To which I answered, Where will you find them? He took off his heavy cavalry boots, and Ellen carried them away to wash the mud off and dry them. She brought them back just as Miss Middleton walked in. In his agony, while struggling with those huge boots and trying to get them on, he spoke to her voluably in French. She turned away from him instantly as she saw his shoeless plight and said to me, I had not heard of your happiness. I did not know the general was here. Not until next day did we have time to remember and laugh at that outbreak of French. Miss Middleton answered him in the same language. She told her how charmed he was with my surroundings and that he would go away with a much lighter heart since he had seen the kind people with whom he would leave me. I asked my husband what that correspondence between Sherman and Hampton meant, this while I was preparing something for our dinner. His back was still turned as he gazed out of the window. He spoke in the low and steady monotone that characterized our conversation the whole day, and yet there was something in his voice that thrilled me, as he said. The second day after our march from Columbia we passed the Eames. He was a bonded man and not at home. His wife said at first that she could not find forage for our horses, but afterward she succeeded in procuring some. I noticed a very handsome girl who stood beside her as she spoke, and I suggested to her mother the propriety of sending her out of the track of both armies. Things were no longer as here to fore. There was so much straggling, so many camp followers with no discipline on the outskirts of the army. The girl answered quickly, I wish to stay with my mother. That very night a party of Wheeler's men came to our camp, and such a tale they told of what had been done at the place, of horror and destruction the mother left raving. The outrage had been committed before her very face, she having been secured first. After this crime the fiends moved on, there were only seven of them. They had been gone but a short time when Wheeler's men went in pursuit at full speed and overtook them, cut their throats, and wrote upon their breasts, these were the seven. But the girl? Oh, she was dead. Are his critics as violent as ever against the president? Asked I, when recovered from pity and horror. Sometimes I think I'm the only friend he has in the world. At these dinners which they give us everywhere, I spoil the sport, for I will not sit still and hear Jeff Davis abused for things he is no more responsible for than any man at that table. Once I lost my temper and told them it sounded like errant nonsense to me and that Jeff Davis was a gentleman and a patriot with more brains than the assembled company. You lost your temper truly, said I. And I did not know it. I thought I was as cool as I am now. In Washington when we left Jeff Davis ranked second to none in intellect and maybe first from the south, and Mrs. Davis was the friend of Mrs. Emory, Mrs. Joe Johnston, and Mrs. Montgomery Blair and others of that circle. Now they rave that he is nobody and never was. And she, I asked, oh, you would think to hear them that he found her yesterday in a Mississippi swamp. Well, in the French Revolution it was worse. When a man failed he was guillotined. Mirobo did not die a day too soon, even Mirobo. He is gone. With despair in my heart I left that railroad station. Alan Green walked home with me. I met his wife and his four ragged little boys a day or so ago. She is the neatest, the primest, the softest of women. Her voice is like the gentle cooing of a dove. That lowering black future hangs there all the same. The end of the war brings no hope of peace or of security to us. I said I had a little piece of bread and a little molasses in store for my dinner today. March 6. Today came a godsend. Even a small piece of bread and the molasses had become things of the past. My larder was empty when a tall mulatto woman brought a tray covered by a huge white serviette. Alan ushered her in with a flourish saying, Mrs. McDaniel's maid. The maid sat down the tray upon my bare table and uncovered it with conscious pride. There were fowls ready for roasting, sausages, butter, bread, eggs, and preserves. I was dumb with delight. After silent thanks to heaven my powers of speech returned and I exhausted myself in messages of gratitude to Mrs. McDaniel. Mrs. you oughtn't a letter see how glad you was, said Alan. It was a letting of yourself down. Mrs. Glover gave me some yarn and I bought five dozen eggs with it from a wagon, eggs for lint. To show that I have faith yet in humanity I paid in advance in yarn for something to eat which they promised to bring tomorrow. Had they raided their eggs at one hundred dollars a dozen in confederate money I would have paid it as readily as ten dollars. But I haggle in yarn for the millionth part of a thread. Two weeks have passed and the rumors from Columbia are still of the vaguest. No letter has come from there, no direct message or messenger. My God! cried Dr. Frank Miles. But it is strange. Can it be anything so dreadful they dare not tell us? Dr. San Julian Rathinell has grown pale and haggard with care. His wife and children were left there. Dr. Brumbie has at last been coaxed into selling me enough leather for the making of a pair of shoes, else I should have had to give up walking. He knew my father well. He intimated that in some way my father helped him through college. His money had not sufficed, and so William C. Preston and my father advanced funds sufficient to let him be graduated. Then my uncle, Charles Miller, married his aunt. I listened in rapture, for all this tended to leniency in the leather business, and I bore off the leather gladly. When asked for confederate money in trade I never stopped a bargain. I give them twenty dollars or fifty dollars cheerfully for anything, either some. March 8. Some childs came with a letter from my husband and a newspaper containing a full account of Sherman's cold-blooded brutality in Columbia. Then we walked three miles to return the call of my benefactress, Mrs. McDaniel. They were kind and hospitable at her house, but my heart was like lead. My head ached and my legs were worse than my head. And then I had a nervous chill. So I came home, went to bed, and stayed there, until the fence brought me a letter saying my husband would be here today. Then I got up and made ready to give him a cheerful reception. Soon a man called, Troy by name, the same who kept the little corner shop so near my house in Columbia, and of whom we bought things so often. We had fraternized. He now shook hands with me and looked in my face pitifully. We seem to have been friends all our lives. He says they stopped the fire at the Methodist College, perhaps to save old Mr. MacArthur's house. Mr. Sheriff Dent, being burned out, took refuge in our house. He contrived to find favor in Yankee eyes. Troy relates that a Yankee officer snatched a watch from Mrs. McCord's bosom. The soldiers tore the bundles of clothes that the poor wretches tried to save from their burning homes and dashed them back into the flames. They meant to make a clean sweep. They were howling round the fires like demons, these Yankees, and their joy and triumph at our destruction. Well, we have given them a big scare and kept them miserable for four years, the little handful of us. A woman we met on the street stopped to tell us a painful coincidence. A general was married, but he could not stay at home very long after the wedding. When his baby was born they telegraphed him, and he sent back a rejoicing answer with an inquiry. Is it a boy or a girl? He was killed before he got the reply. Was it not sad? His poor young wife says, he did not live to hear that his son lived. The kind woman, added sorrowfully, died and did not know the sect of his child. Let us hope it will be a Methodist, said Isabella, the irrepressible. At the venison feast Isabella heard a good word for me and one for General Chestnut's air of distinction, a thing people cannot give themselves, try as ever they may. Lord Byron says, everybody knows a gentleman when he sees one, and nobody can tell what it is that makes a gentleman. He knows the thing, but he can't describe it. Now there are some French words that cannot be translated, and we all know the thing they mean. Gracieuse and Svelte, for instance, has applied to a woman. Not that anything was said of me like that, far from it. I am fair, fat, forty, and jolly, and in my unbroken jollity, as far as they know, they found my charm. You see, she doesn't howl, she doesn't cry. She never, never tells anybody about what she was used to at home and what she has lost. High praise, and I intend to try and deserve it ever after. March 10th. Went to church crying to Ellen. It is lint we must fast and pray. When I came home my good fairy, Colonel Childs, had been here bringing rice and potatoes and promising flour. He is a trump. He pulled out his pocketbook and offered to be my banker. He stood there on the street, Miss Middleton and Isabella witnessing the generous action, and straight out offered me money. No, put up that, said I. I am not a beggar, and I never will be. To die is so much easier. Alas, after that flourish of trumpets, when he came with a sack of flour, I accepted it gratefully. I receive things I cannot pay for, but money is different. There I draw a line, imaginary perhaps. Once before the same thing happened. Our letters of credit came slowly in 1845 when we went unexpectedly to Europe, and our letters were to follow us. I was a poor little inoffensive bride, and a British officer who guessed our embarrassment, for we did not tell him, he came over with us on the ship. Asked my husband to draw on his banker until the letters of credit should arrive. It was a nice thing for a stranger to do. We have never lost what we never had. We have never had any money, only unlimited credit, for my husband's richest kind of a father ensured us all manner of credit. It was all a mirage only at last, and it has gone, just as we drew nigh to it. Colonel Child says eight of our senators are for reconstruction, and that a ray of light has penetrated inward from Lincoln, who told Judge Campbell that southern land would not be confiscated. March 12th. Better today. A long, long, weary day in grief has passed away. I suppose General Chestnut is somewhere. But where? That is the question. Only once has he visited this sad spot, which holds, he says, all that he cares for on earth. Once he comes or writes soon I will cease, or try to cease, this weary sum looking, looking, looking for him. March 13th. My husband at last did come for a visit of two hours. Brought Lawrence, who had been to Camden, and was there indeed during the raid. My husband has been ordered to Chester, South Carolina. We are surprised to see by the papers that we behaved heroically in leaving everything we had to be destroyed without one thought of surrender. We had not thought of ourselves from the heroic point of view. Isaac McLaughlin hid and saved everything we trusted him with. A grateful negro is Isaac. March 15th. Lawrence says Miss Chestnut is very proud of the presence of mind and cool self-possession she showed in the face of the enemy. She lost, after all, only two bottles of champagne, two of her brother's gold-headed canes, and her brother's horses, including Claudia, the brood-maire, that he valued beyond price. He hid her own carriage and a fly-brush boy called Batas, whose occupation in life was to stand behind the table with his peacock feathers and brush the flies away. He was the sole member of his dusky race at Mulberry, who deserted all master to follow the Yankees. Now for our losses at the Hermitage. Added to the gold-headed canes and Claudia, we lost every mule and horse, and President Davis's beautiful Arabian was captured. Johns were there, too. My light dragoon, Johnny, and heavy swell, is stripped light enough for the fight now. Jonathan, whom we trusted, betrayed us, and the plantation and mills, Mulberry House, etc., were saved by Claybourne, that black rascal who was suspected by all the world. Claybourne boldly affirmed that Mr. Chestnut would not be hurt by destroying his place. The invaders would hurt only the negroes. Ma's James, said he, hardly ever come here, and he takes only a little something not to eat when he do come. Fever continuing, I sent for San Julian Ravinelle. We had a wrangle over the slavery question. Then he fell foul of everybody who had not conducted this war according to his ideas. Ellen had something nice to offer him, thanks to the ever bountiful child, but he was too angry, too anxious, too miserable to eat. He pitched into Ellen after he had disposed of me. Ellen stood glaring at him from the fireplace, her blue eye nearly white, her other eye blazing as a comet. Last Sunday he gave her some dover's powders for me. Directions were written on the paper in which the medicine was wrapped, and he told her to show these to me, then to put what I should give her into a wine glass and let me drink it. Ellen put it all into the wine glass and let me drink it at one dose. It was enough to last you your lifetime, he said. It was murder. Turning to Ellen. What did you do with the directions? I never see no directions. You never give me none. I told you to show that paper to your mistress. Well, I flung that old brown paper into fire. What you make an aldous fuss for. Soon as I give Mrs. Dephysic, she stopped fretting and flinging about. She go to sleep sweet as a suckling baby, and she slept two days and nights, and now she heaped better. And Ellen withdrew from the controversy. Well, all is well that ends well, Mrs. Chestnut. You took opium enough to kill several persons. You were worried out and needed rest. You came near getting it thoroughly. You were in no danger from your disease, but your doctor and your nurse combined were deadly. Maybe I was saved by the adulteration, the feebleness of Confederate medicine. A letter from my husband, written at Chester Courthouse on March 15th, says, In the morning I send Lieutenant Ogden with Lawrence to Lincolnton to bring you down. I have three vacant rooms, one with bedsteads, chairs, wash stands, basins, and pitchers. The two others bear. You can have half of a kitchen for your cooking. I have also at Dr. DeVegas a room, furnished, to which you are invited. Bored also. You can take your choice. If you can get your friends in Lincolnton to assume charge of your valuables, only bring such as you may need here. Perhaps it will be better to bring bed and bedding and the other indispensable. CHESTER SOUTH CAROLINA March 21, 1865 Captain Ogden came for me. The splendid child was true as steel to the last. Surely he is the kindest of men. Captain Ogden was slightly incredulous when I depicted the wonders of Colonel Childs's generosity. So I skillfully led out the good gentleman for inspection, and he walked to the train with us. He offered me Confederate money, silver, and gold, and finally offered to buy our cotton and pay us now in gold. Of course I laughed at his overflowing bounty and accepted nothing, but I begged him to come down to Chester or Camden and buy our cotton of General Chesnut there. On the train after leaving Lincolnton, as Captain Ogden is a refugee, has had no means of communicating with his home since New Orleans fell, and was sure to know how refugees contrived to live. I beguiled the time acquiring information from him. When people are without assent, how do they live? I asked. I am about to enter the noble band of homeless, houseless refugees, and Confederate pay does not buy one's shoestrings. To which he replied, Sponge, sponge, why did you not let Colonel Childs pay your bills? I have no bills, said I. We have never made bills anywhere, not even at home, where they would trust us, and nobody would trust me in Lincolnton. Why did you not borrow his money General Chesnut could pay him at his leisure? I am by no means sure General Chesnut will ever again have any money, said I. As the train rattled and banged along, and I waved my handkerchief in farewell to Miss Middleton, Isabella, and other devoted friends, I could only wonder if fate would ever throw me again with such kind, clever, agreeable, congenial companions. The MacLanes refused to be paid for their rooms. No plummet can sound the depths of the hospitality and kindness of the North Carolina people. Miss Fortune dogged us from the outset. Everything went wrong with the train. We broke down within two miles of Charlotte, and had to walk that distance, which was pretty rough on an invalid barely out of a fever. My spirit was further broken by losing an invaluable lace veil, which was worn because I was too poor to buy a cheaper one. That is, if there were any veils at all for sale in our region. My husband had ordered me to a house in Charlotte kept by some great friends of his. They established me in the drawing-room, a really handsome apartment. They made up a bed there and put in a wash stand and plenty of water, with everything refreshingly clean and nice. But it continued to be a public drawing-room, open to all, so that I was half-dead at night and wanted to go to bed. The piano was there, and the company played it. The landlady announced, proudly, that for supper there were nine kinds of custard. Custard sounded nice and light, so I sent for some, but found it heavy potato pie. I said, Ellen, this may kill me, though Dover's powder did not. Don't you believe that, Mrs. Try? We barricaded ourselves in the drawing-room that night and left the next day at dawn. At the station we had another disappointment. The train was behind time. There we sat on our boxes nine long hours, for the cars might come at any moment and we dared not move an inch from the spot. Finally the train rolled in, overloaded with paroled prisoners. But heaven helped us. A kind male agent invited us, with two other forlorn women, into his comfortable and clean male car. Ogden, true to his theory, did not stay at the boarding-house as we did. Some Christian acquaintances took him in for the night. This he explained with a grin. My husband was at the Chester station with a carriage. We drove at once to Mrs. DeVega's. March 24th. I have been ill, but what could you expect? My lines, however, have again fallen in pleasant places. Mrs. DeVega is young, handsome and agreeable, a kind and perfect hostess. And as to the house, my room is all that I could ask and leaves nothing to be desired, so very fresh, clean, warm and comfortable is it. It is the drawing-room suddenly made into a bedroom for me. But it is my very own. We are among the civilized of the earth once more. March 27th. I have moved again, and now I am looking from a window high with something more to see than the sky. We have the third story of Dr. DeVega's house, which opens on the straight street that leads to the railroad about a mile off. Mrs. Beddon is the loveliest of young widows. Yesterday at church Isaac Hain nestled so close to her capstrings that I had to touch him and say, Sit up! Josiah Beddon was killed in that famous fight of the Charleston Light Dragoons. The Dragoons stood still to be shot down in their tracks, having no orders to retire. They had been forgotten, doubtless, and they scorned to take care of themselves. In this high and airy retreat, as in Richmond, then in Columbia, and then in Lincolnton, my cry is still, if they would only leave me here in peace and if I were sure things never could be worse with me. Again am I surrounded by old friends. People seem to vie with each other to show how good they can be to me. Today Smith opened the trenches and appeared laden with a tray covered with a snow-white napkin. Here was my first help toward housekeeping again. Mrs. Pride has sent a boiled ham, a loaf of bread, a huge pancake, another neighbor, coffee already parched in ground, a loaf of sugar already cracked, candles, pickles, and all the other things one must trust to love for now. Such money as we have avails us nothing, even if there were anything left in the shops to buy. We had a jolly luncheon. James Lownds called, the best of good company. He said of Buck, she is a queen and ought to reign in a palace. No prince charming yet, no man has yet approached her that I think half good enough for her. Then Mrs. Prello Hamilton, nay, Levy, came with the story of family progress, not a royal one from Columbia here. Before we left home, said she, Major Hamilton sped a map of the United States on the table and showed me with his finger where Sherman was likely to go. Unlike I'd demurred. But suppose he does not choose to go that way. Poo-poo, what do you know of war? So we set out, my husband, myself, and two children, all in one small buggy. The 14th of February we took up our line of march and straight before Sherman's men for five weeks we fled together. By incessant hurrying and scurrying from pillar to post we succeeded in acting as a sort of avat courier of the Yankee army. Not rest and with much haste we got here last Wednesday and here we mean to stay and defy Sherman and his legions. Much the worse for where were we. The first night their beauty sleep was rudely broken into at Alston with a cry. Move on, the Yankees are upon us. So they hurried on, half awake, to Winsborough, but with no better luck. There they had to lighten the ship, leave trunks, et cetera, and put on all sail. For this town the Yankees were only five miles behind. Whip and spur, ride for your life, was the cry. Sherman's objective point seemed to be our buggy, said she. For you know that when we got the Lancaster Sherman was expected there, and he keeps his appointments. That is, he kept that one. Two small children were in our chariot, and I began to think of the Red Sea expedition. But we lost no time and soon we were in Chirot, clearly out of the track. We thanked God for all his mercies and hugged to our bosoms fond hopes of a bed and bath so much needed by all, especially for the children. At twelve o'clock General Hardy himself knocked us up with word to, march, march, for all the blue bonnets are over the border. In mad haste we made for Fayetteville, when they said, God bless your soul, this is the seat of war now, the battleground where Sherman and Johnston are to try conclusions. So we harped back, as the hunters say, and cut across country aiming for this place. Clean clothes, my dear? Never a one except as we took off garment by garment and washed it and dried it by our campfire, with our loins girded and in haste. I was snug and comfortable all that time in Lincolnton. Today Stephen D. Lee's corps marched through, only to surrender. The camp songs of these men were a heartbreak, so sad, yet so stirring. They would have warmed the blood of an ice-lander. The leading voice was powerful, mellow, clear, distinct, pathetic, sweet. So I sat down, as women have done before, when they hung up their harps by strange streams, and I wept the bitterness of such weeping. Music, away, away, thou speakest to me of things which in all my long life I have not found, and I shall not find. There they go, the gay and gallant few, doomed, the last gathering of the flower of southern pride, to be killed, or worse, to a prison. They continued to prance by, light and jaunty. They marched with as airy a tread as if they still believed the world was all on their side, and that there were no Yankee bullets for the unwary. What will Joe Johnston do with them now? The hood melodrama is over, though the curtain has not fallen on the last scene. Cassandra croaks and makes many mistakes, but today she believes that hood stock is going down. When that style of enthusiasm is on the wane, the rapidity of its extinction is miraculous. It is like the snuffing out of a candle, one moment white, then gone forever. No, that is not right. It is the snowflake on the river that is referred to. I am getting things as much mixed as do the fine ladies of society. Lee and Johnston have each fought a drawn battle, only a few more dead bodies lie stiff and stark on an unknown battlefield, for we do not so much as know where these drawn battles took place. Teddy Barnwell, after sharing with me my first luncheon, failed me cruelly. He was to come for me to go down to the train and see Isabella pass by. One word with Isabella worth a thousand ordinary ones. So she has gone by, and I have not seen her. Old Colonel Chestnut refuses to say grace, but as he leaves the table audibly declares, I thank God for a good dinner. When asked why he did this odd thing, he said, my way is to be sure of a thing before I return thanks for it. Mayor Goodwin thanked Sherman for promised protection to Columbia, soon after the burning began. I received the wife of a post-office robber. The poor thing had done no wrong, and I felt so sorry for her. Who would be a woman? Who that fool, a weeping, pining, faithful woman? She hath hard measures still when she hopes kindest, and all her beauty only makes ingrates. March 29. I was awakened with a bunch of violets from Mrs. Pride. Violets always remind me of Kate and of the sweet south wind that blew in the Garden of Paradise part of my life. Then it all came back, the dread unspeakable that lies behind every thought now. Thursday. I find I have not spoken of the Boxcar which held the Preston Party that day on their way to York from Richmond. In the party were Mr. and Mrs. Lawson Clay, General and Mrs. Preston and their three daughters, Captain Rogers and Mr. Portman, whose father is an English Earl and connected financially and happily with Portman Square. In my American ignorance I may not state Mr. Portman's case plainly. Mr. Portman is, of course, a younger son. Then there was Sally and her baby and wet nurse, with no end of servants, male and female. In this ark they slept, ate and drank, such being the fortune of war. We were there but a short time, but Mr. Portman, during that brief visit of ours, was said to have eaten three luncheons, the number of his drinks, toddies so called, were counted, too. Mr. Portman's contribution to the larder had been three small pigs. They were, however, run over by the train and made sausage meat off unduly and before their time. General Lee says to the men who shirk duty, this is the people's war. When they tire, I stop. Wigfall says, it is all over, the game is up. He is on his way to Texas, and when the hanging begins he can step over into Mexico. I am plucking up heart. Such troops do I see go by every day. They must turn the tide, and surely they are going for something more than surrender. It is very late, and the wind flaps my curtain, which seems to moan, too late. All this will end by making me a nervous lunatic. Yesterday while I was driving with Mrs. Pride Colonel McCaw passed us. He called out, I do hope you are in comfortable quarters. Very comfortable, I replied. Oh, Mrs. Chestnut said Mrs. Pride, how can you say that? Perfectly comfortable, and hope it may never be worse with me, said I. I have a clean little parlor, sixteen by eighteen, with its bare floor well scrubbed, a dinner table, six chairs, and—well, that is all—but I have a charming look-out from my window high. My world is now thus divided into two parts, where Yankees are, and where Yankees are not. As I sat disconsolate looking out, ready for any new tramp of men and arms, the magnificent figure of General Preston Hove in sight. He was mounted on a mighty steed, worthy of its rider, followed by his trusty squire William Walker, who bore before him the General's portmanteau. When I had time to realize the situation, I perceived at General Preston's right hand Mr. Christopher Hampton and Mr. Portman who passed by. Soon Mrs. Pride, in some occult way, divined or heard that they were coming here, and she sent me at once no end of good things for my tea-table. General Preston entered very soon after, and with him Clement Clay of Alabama, the latter in pursuit of his wife's trunk. I left it with the Reverend Mr. Martin, and have no doubt it is perfectly safe. But where? We have written to Mr. Martin to inquire. Then Wilmite Desessure appeared. I am here, he said, to consult with General Chestnut. He and I always think alike. He added, emphatically, slavery is stronger than ever. If you think so, said I, you will find that for once you and General Chestnut do not think alike. He has held that slavery was a thing of the past, this many a year. I said to General Preston, I pass my days and nights partly at this window. I am sure our army is silently dispersing. Men are moving the wrong way, all the time. They slip by with no songs and no shouts now. They have given the thing up. See for yourself, look there. For a while the streets were thronged with soldiers, and then they were empty again. But the marching now is without tap of drum. March 31. Mr. Prello Hamilton told us of a great adventure. Mrs. Preston was put under his care on the train. He soon found the only other women along were strictly unfortunate females, as Carlile calls them, beautiful and aggressive. He had to communicate the unpleasant fact of Mrs. Preston on account of their propinquity, and was lost in admiration of her silent dignity, her quiet self-possession, her calmness, her deafness and blindness, her thoroughbred ignoring of all that she did not care to see. Some women, no matter how ladylike, would have made a fuss or would have fidgeted, but Mrs. Preston dominated the situation and possessed her soul in innocence and peace. Met Robert Johnston from Camden. He has been a prisoner, having been taken at Camden. The Yankees robbed Zack Canty of his forks and spoons. When Zack did not seem to like it, they laughed at him. When he said he did not see any fun in it, they pretended to weep and wiped their eyes with their coat-tails. All this maddening derision Zack said was as hard to bear as it was to see them ride off with his horse, Albine. They stole all of Mrs. Zack's jewelry and silver. When the Yankee general heard of it, he wrote her a very polite note, saying how sorry he was that she had been annoyed, and returned a bundle of Zack's love letters written to her before she was married. Robert Johnston said Miss Chestnut was a brave and determined spirit. One Yankee officer came in while they were at breakfast and sat down to warm himself at the fire. Rebels have no rights, Miss Chestnut said to him politely. I suppose you have come to rob us. Please do so and go. Your presence agitates my blind old father. The man jumped up in a rage and said, What do you take me for, a robber? No indeed, said she, and for very shame he marched out empty handed. End of Chapter 20, Part 1. Chapter 20, Part 2 of A Diary from Dixie. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Read by Laurie Ann Walden. A Diary from Dixie by Mary Chestnut. Chapter 20, Chester, South Carolina, Part 2. April 3. Saul General Preston write off. He came to tell me good-bye. I told him he looked like a crusader on his great white horse, with William his squire at his heels. Our men are all consummate riders and have their servants well mounted behind them, carrying cloaks and traps. How different from the same men packed like sardines in dirty railroad cars, usually floating inch deep in liquid tobacco juice. For the kitchen and Ellen's comfort I wanted a pine table and a kitchen chair. A woman sold me one today for three thousand Confederate dollars. Mrs. Hamilton has been disappointed again. Prelo Hamilton says the person into whose house they expected to move today came to say she could not take borders for three reasons. First, that they had smallpox in the house. And the two others? Oh, I did not ask for the two others. April 5. Miss Middleton's letter came in answer to mine, telling her how generous my friends here were to me. We long, she says, for our own small sufficiency of wood, corn, and vegetables. Here is a struggle unto death, although the neighbors would continue to feed us, as you would say, with a spoon. We have fallen upon a new device. We keep a cookery book on the mantelpiece. And when the dinner is deficient we just read off a pudding or a crème. It does not entirely satisfy the appetite, this dessert in imagination, but perhaps it is as good for the digestion. It's always ready to go, though still upstairs. Someone came out to say General Hood had called. Mrs. Hamilton cried out, "'Send word, you are not at home.' "'Never,' said I. "'Why make him climb all these stairs when you must go in five minutes?' If he had come here dragging Sherman as a captive at his chariot-wheels I might say not at home, but not now. And I ran down and greeted him on the sidewalk in the face of all, and walked slowly beside him as he toiled up the weary three stories limping gallantly. He was so well-dressed and so cordial, not depressed in the slightest. He was so glad to see me. He calls his report self-defense, says Joe Johnston attacked him, and he was obliged to state things from his point of view. And now follow statements where one may read between the lines what one chooses. He had been offered a command in Western Virginia, but as General Lee was concerned, because he and Joe Johnston were not on cordial terms, and as the fatigue of the mountain campaign would be too great for him, he would like the chance of going across the Mississippi. Texas was true to him, and would be his home, as it had voted him a ranch somewhere out there. They say General Lee is utterly despondent and has no plan if Richmond goes, as go it must. Richmond has fallen, and I have no heart to write about it. Grant broke through our lines, and Sherman cut through them. Stoneman is this side of Danville. They are too many for us. Everything is lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon. Hood says we shall all be obliged to go west. To Texas, I mean, for our own part of the country will be overrun. Yes, a solitude and a wild waste it may become, but as to that we can rough it in the bush at home. De Fontaine, in his newspaper, continues the old cry. Now Richmond is given up, he says. It was too heavy a load to carry, and we are stronger than ever. Stronger than ever? Nine-tenths of our army are underground, and where is another army to come from? Will they wait until we grow one? What a week it has been. Madness, sadness, anxiety, turmoil, ceaseless excitement. The wigfalls passed through on their way to Texas. We did not see them. Luley told Hood they were bound for the Rio Grande and intended to shake hands with Max Millian, emperor of Mexico. Yankees were expected here every minute. Mrs. Davis came. We went down to the cars at daylight to receive her. She dined with me. Only Winnie, the baby, came too. Buck and Hood were here, and that queen of women, Mary Darby. Clay behaved like a trump. He was as devoted to Mrs. Davis in her adversity as if they had never quarreled in her prosperity. People sent me things for Mrs. Davis, as they did in Columbia for Mr. Davis. It was a luncheon or breakfast only she stayed for here. Mrs. Brown prepared a dinner for her at the station. I went down with her. She left here at five o'clock. My heart was like lead, but we did not give way. She was as calm and smiling as ever. It was but a brief glimpse of my dear Mrs. Davis and under altered skies. April seventeenth. A letter from Mrs. Davis who writes, Do come to me and see how we get on. I shall have a spare room by the time you arrive, indifferently furnished, but oh so affectionately placed at your service. You will receive such a loving welcome. One perfect bliss have I. The baby, who grows fat and is smiling always, is christened, and not old enough to develop the world's vices or to be snubbed by it. The name so long delayed is Verena Ann. My name is a heritage of woe. Are you delighted with your husband? I am delighted with him as well as with my own. It is well to lose an Arabian horse if one elicits such a tender and at the same time nightly letter as General Chestnut wrote to my poor old Prometheus. I do not think that for a time he felt the vultures after the reception of the General's letter. I hear horrid reports about Richmond. It is said that all below Ninth Street to the Rockets has been burned by the rabble who mobbed the town. The Yankee performances have not been chronicled. May God take our cause into his own hands. April nineteenth. Just now, when Mr. Clay dashed upstairs, pale as a sheet saying, General Lee has capitulated. I saw it reflected in Mary Darby's face before I heard him speak. She staggered to the table, sat down, and wept aloud. Mr. Clay's eyes were not dry. Quite beside herself Mary shrieked. Now we belong to Negroes and Yankees. Buck said, I do not believe it. How different from ours of them is their estimate of us. How contradictory is their attitude toward us. To keep the despised and iniquitous South within their borders, as part of their country, they are willing to enlist millions of men at home and abroad and to spend billions. And we know they do not love fighting per se nor spending money. They are perfectly willing to have three killed for R1. We hear they have all grown rich, though shoddy, whatever that is. You and Yankees can make a fortune trading jackknives. Somehow it is borne in on me that we will have to pay the piper, was remarked to-day. No, blood cannot be squeezed from a turnip. You cannot pour anything out of an empty cup. We have no money, even for taxes, or to be confiscated. While the Preston girls are here, my dining-room is given up to them, and we camp on the landing with our one table and six chairs. Beds are made on the dining-room floor. Otherwise there is no furniture except buckets of water and bath-tubs in their improvised chamber. Night and day this landing and these steps are crowded with the elite of the Confederacy, going and coming, and when night comes, or rather bed-time, more beds are made on the floor of the landing-place for the war-worn soldiers to rest upon. The whole house is a Bivouac. As Pickon said of South Carolina in 1861, we are an armed camp. My husband is rarely at home. I sleep with the girls, and my room is given up to soldiers. General Lee's few but undismayed, his remnant of an army, or the part from the south and west, sad and crestfallen, pass through Chester. Many discomfited heroes find their way up these stairs. They say Johnston will not be caught as Lee was. He can retreat, that is his trade. If he would not fight Sherman in the hill-country of Georgia, what will he do but retreat in the plains of North Carolina with Grant, Sherman, and Thomas all to the fore? We are to stay here. Running is useless now, so we mean to bide a Yankee raid, which they say is imminent. Why fly? They are everywhere these Yankees, like red ants, like the locusts and frogs which were the plagues of Egypt. The plucky way in which our men keep up is beyond praise. There is no howling, and our poverty is made a matter of laughing. We deride our own pinnury. Of the country we try not to speak at all. April 22. This yellow confederate choir of paper, my journal, blotted by entries, has been buried three days with the silver sugar-dish, teapot, milk jug, and a few spoons and forks that follow my fortunes as I wander. With these valuables was Hood's silver cup, which was partly crushed when he was wounded at Chickamauga. It has been a wild three days, with aides galloping around with messages, Yankees hanging over us like a sword of democles. We have been in queer straits. We sat up at Mrs. Beddon's, dressed, without once going to bed for forty-eight hours, and we were a weary. Colonel Kidwalleter Jones came with a despatch, a sealed, secret despatch. It was for General Chestnut. I opened it. Lincoln, old Abe Lincoln, has been killed, murdered, and seward wounded. Why? By whom? It is simply maddening all this. I sent off messenger after messenger for General Chestnut. I have not the faintest idea where he is, but I know this foul murder will bring upon us worse miseries. Mary Darby says, but they murdered him themselves. No confederates are in Washington. But if they see fit to accuse us of instigating it? Who murdered him? Who knows? See if they don't take vengeance on us now that we are ruined and cannot repel them any longer. The death of Lincoln I call a warning to tyrants. He will not be the last president put to death in the capital, though he is the first. Buck never submits to be bored. The boars came to tea at Mrs. Beddon's, and then sat and talked. So prosy, so weary some was the discourse. So endless it seemed, that we envied Buck, who was mooning on the Piazza. She rarely speaks now. April 23. My silver wedding day, and I am sure the unhappiest day of my life. Mr. Portman came with Christopher Hampton. Portman told of Miss Kate Hampton, who is perhaps the most thoroughly ladylike person in the world. When he told her that Lee had surrendered she started up from her seat and said, that is a lie. Well, Miss Hampton, I tell the tale as it was told me. I can do no more. No wonder John Chesnut is bitter. They say Mulberry has been destroyed by a corps commanded by General Logan. Someone asked Cooley, will General Chesnut be shot as a soldier or hung as a senator? I am not of sufficient consequence, answered he. They will stop short of brigadiers. I resigned my seat in the United States Senate weeks before there was any secession, so I cannot be hung as a senator. But after all it is only a choice between drumhead court-martial, short-shift, and a lingering death at home from starvation. These negroes are unchanged. The shining black mask they wear does not show a ripple of change. They are Sphinxes. Ellen has had my diamonds to keep for a week or so. When the danger was over she handed them back to me with as little apparent interest in the matter as if they had been garden peas. Mrs. U.G. was in church in Richmond when the news of the surrender came. Worshipers were in the midst of the communion service. Mr. McFarland was called out to send away the gold from his bank. Mr. Minneger Road's English grew confused. Then the President was summoned, and distress of mind showed itself in every face. The night before one of General Lee's aides, Walter Taylor, was married, and was off to the wars immediately after the ceremony. One year ago we left Richmond. The Confederacy has double-quicked downhill since then. One year since I stood in that beautiful Hollywood by little Joe Davis's grave. Now we have burnt towns, deserted plantations, sacked villages. You seem resolute to look the worst in the face, said General Chestnut wearily. Yes, poverty with no future and no hope. But no slaves, thank God, cried Buck. We would be the scorn of the world if the world thought of us at all. You see, we are exiles and paupers. Pile on the agony. How does our famous Captain, the great Lee, bear the Yankees' galling chain? I asked. He knows how to possess his soul in patience, answered my husband. If there were no such word as subjugation, no debts, no poverty, no Negro mobs backed by Yankees. If all things were well, you would shiver and feel benumbed, he went on, pointing at me in an oratorical attitude. Your sentence is pronounced, Camden for life. May 1st, in Chester still. I climbed these steep steps alone. They have all gone, all passed by. Buck went with Mr. C. Hampton to York. Mary, Mrs. UG, and Pinkney took flight together. One day just before they began to dissolve in air, Captain Gay was seated at the table, halfway between me on the top step, and John in the window, with his legs outside. Said someone today, she showed me her engagement ring, and I put it back on her hand. She is engaged, but not to me. By the heaven that is above us all, I saw you kiss her hand. That I deny. Captain Gay glared in angry surprise, and insisted that he had seen it. Sit down, Gay, said the cool Captain, in his most mournful way. You see, my father died when I was a baby, and my grandfather took me in hand. To him I owe this moral maxim. He is ninety years old, a wise old man. Now remember my grandfather's teaching for evermore. A gentleman must not kiss and tell. General Preston came to say good-bye. He will take his family abroad at once. Burnside, in New Orleans, owes him some money and will pay it. There will be no more confiscation, my dear madam, said he. They must see that we have been punished enough. They do not think so, my dear general. This very day a party of Federals passed in hot pursuit of our President. A terrible fire-eater, one of the few men left in the world who believe we have a right divine, being white, to hold Africans who are black, in bonds forever. He is six feet two, an athlete, a splendid specimen of the animal man. But he has never been under fire. His place in the service was a bomb-proof office, so called. With a face red-hot with rage he denounced Jeff Davis in hood. Come now, said Edward the Handsome. Men who could fight and did not, they are the men who ruined us. They wanted soldiers. If the men who are cursing Jeff Davis now had fought with hood and fought as hood-fault, we'd be all right now. And then he told of my trouble one day while hood was here. Just such a fellow as you came up on this little platform, and before Mrs. Chestnut could warn him began to heap insults on Jeff Davis and his sad trap, hood. Mrs. Chestnut held up her hands. Stop, not another word. You shall not abuse my friends here. Not Jeff Davis behind his back, not hood to his face, for he is in that room and hears you. Fancy how dumbfounded this creature was. Mrs. U.G. told a story of Joe Johnston in his callow days before he was famous. After an illness Johnston's hair all fell out, not a hair was left on his head which shone like a fiery cannonball. One of the gentlemen from Africa who waited at table sniggered so at dinner that he was ordered out by the grave and decorous black butler. General U.G., feeling for the agonies of young Africa, as he strove to stifle his mirth, suggested that Joe Johnston should cover his head with his handkerchief. A red silk one was produced, and turban shaped placed on his head. That completely finished the gravity of the butler who fled in helplessness. His guffaw on the outside of the door became plainly audible. More U.G. then suggested, as they must have the waiter back or the dinner could not go on, that Joe should eat with his hat on, which he did. CHAPTER XXI Since we left Chester, nothing but solitude. Nothing but tall blackened chimneys to show that any man has ever trod this road before. This is Sherman's track. It is hard not to curse him. I wept incessantly at first. The roses of the gardens are already hiding the ruins. My husband said nature is a wonderful renovator. He tried to say something else, and then I shut my eyes and made a vow that if we were a crushed people, crushed by weight, I would never be a whimpering, pining slave. We heard loud explosions of gunpowder in the direction of Camden. Destroyers were at it there. Met William Walker, whom Mr. Preston left in charge of a carload of his valuables. General Preston was hardly out of sight before poor, helpless William had to stand by and see the car plundered. My dear Mrs., they have cleaned me out. Nothing left, moaned William the faithful. We have nine armed couriers with us. Can they protect us? Made adieu to the staff at Chester. No general ever had so remarkable a staff, so accomplished, so agreeable, so well-bred, and I must say, so handsome, and can add, so brave and efficient. May 4th. Home again at Bloomsbury. From Chester to Winsborough we did not see one living thing, man, woman, or animal, except poor William trudging home after his sad disaster. The blooming of the gardens had a funeral effect. Nature is so luxuriant here she soon covers the ravages of savages. No frost has occurred since the 7th of March, which accounts for the wonderful advance in vegetation. This seems providential to these starving people, and this climate so much that is edible can be grown in two months. At Winsborough we stayed at Mr. Robertson's. There we left the wagon train. And Mr. Brisbane, one of the general's couriers, came with us on escort duty. The Robertsons were very kind and hospitable, brimful of yanky anecdotes. To my amazement the young people of Winsborough had a May Day celebration amid the smoking ruins. Irrepressible is youth. The fidelity of the negroes is the principal topic. There seems to be not a single case of a negro who betrayed his master, and yet they showed a natural and exultant joy at being free. We left Winsborough and negroes were seen in the fields plowing and hoeing corn just as in antebellum times. The fields in that respect looked quite cheerful. We did not pass in the line of Sherman savages, and so saw some houses standing. Mary Kirkland has had experience with the Yankees. She has been pronounced the most beautiful woman on this side of the Atlantic, and has been spoiled accordingly in all society. When the Yankees came, Monroe, their negro man's servant, told her to stand up and hold two of her children in her arms, with the other two pressed as close against her knees as they could get. Mammy Selina and Lizzie then stood grimly on each side of their young misses and her children. For four mortal hours the soldiers surged through the rooms of the house. Sometimes Mary and her children were roughly jostled against the wall, but Mammy and Lizzie were staunch supporters. The Yankee soldiers taunted the negro women for their foolishness in standing by their cruel slave owners, and taunted Mary with being glad of the protection of her poor, ill-used slaves. Monroe, meanwhile, had one leg bandaged and pretended to be lame, so that he might not be enlisted as a soldier, and kept making pathetic appeals to Mary. "'Don't answer them back, Miss Mary,' said he. "'Let them say what they want to. Don't answer them back. Don't give them any chance to say you are impudent to them.' One man said to her, "'Why do you shrink from us and avoid us so? We did not come here to fight for negroes. We hate them. At Port Royal I saw a beautiful white woman driving in a wagon with a cold black negro man. If she had been anything to me I would have shot her through the heart.' "'Oh, oh,' said Lizzie, "'that's the way you talk in here. I'll remember that when you begin outside to beg me to run away with you.' Finally poor Aunt Betsy, Mary's mother, fainted from pure fright and exhaustion. Mary put down her baby and sprang to her mother, who was lying limp in a chair, and fiercely called out, "'Leave this room, you wretches. Do you mean to kill my mother? She is ill. I must put her to bed.' Without a word they all slunk out, ashamed. If I had only tried that hours ago,' she now said. Outside they remarked that she was an insolent rebel hussy who thinks herself too good to speak to a soldier of the United States. Then one of them said, "'Let us go in and break her mouth.' But the better ones held the more outrageous back. Monroe slipped in again and said, "'Missy, for God's sake, when they come in be sociable with them. They will kill you.' "'Then let me die.' The negro soldiers were far worse than the white ones. Mrs. Bartow drove with me to Mulberry. On one side of the house we found every window had been broken, every bell torn down, every piece of furniture destroyed, and every door smashed in. But the other side was intact. Maria Whittaker and her mother, who had been left in charge, explained this odd state of things. The Yankees were busy as beavers working like regular carpenters, destroying everything when their general came in and stopped them. He told them it was a sin to destroy a fine old house like that whose owner was over ninety years old. He would not have had it done for the world. It was wanton mischief. He explained to Maria that soldiers at such times were excited, wild, and unruly. They carried off sacks full of our books, since, unfortunately, they found a pile of empty sacks in the garret. Our books, our letters, our papers were afterward strewn along the Charleston road. Somebody found things of ours as far away as Vance's Ferry. This was Potter's Raid. Footnote. The reference appears to be to General Edward E. Potter, a native of New York City, who died in 1889. General Potter entered the Federal Service early in the war. He recruited a regiment of North Carolina troops and engaged in operations in North and South Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. Footnote. Sherman took only our horses. Potter's Raid came after Johnston's surrender and ruined us finally, burning our mills and gins and a hundred bales of cotton. Indeed, nothing is left to us now but the bare land and the debts contracted for the support of hundreds of Negroes during the war. J. H. Boykin was at home at the time to look after his own interests, and he, with John Decesur, has saved the cotton on their estate, with the mules and farming utensils, and plenty of cotton as capital to begin on again. The Negroes would be a good riddance. A hired man would be a good deal cheaper than a man whose father and mother, wife, and twelve children have to be fed, clothed, housed, and nursed. Their taxes paid, and their doctor's bills all for his half-done, slovenly lazy work. For years we have thought Negroes a nuisance that did not pay. They pretend exuberant loyalty to us now. Only one man of Mr. Chestnut's left the plantation with the Yankees. When the Yankees found the Western troops were not at Camden, but down below Swift Creek, like sensible folk they came up the other way, and while we waited at Chester for marching orders, we were quickly ruined after the surrender. With our cotton saved and cotton at a dollar a pound, we might be in comparatively easy circumstances. But now it is the devil to pay, and no pitch hot. Well, all this was to be. Goddard Bailey, editor, whose prejudices are all against us, described the raids to me in this wise. They were regularly organized. First came squads who demanded arms and whisky. Then came the rascals who hunted for silver, ransacked the ladies' wardrobes, and scared women and children into fits, at least those who could be scared. Some of these women could not be scared. Then came some smiling, suave, well-dressed officers who regretted it all so much. Outside the gate, officers, men, and bummers divided even, share and share alike, the piles of plunder. When we crossed the river coming home, the ferryman at Chestnut's ferry asked for his fee. Among us all we could not muster the small silver coin he demanded. There was poverty for you. Nor did a stiver appear among us until Molly was hauled home from Columbia, where she was waging war with Sheriff Dent's family. As soon as her foot touched her native heath, she sent to hunt up the cattle. Many of our cows were found in the swamp, like Marion's men they had escaped the enemy. Molly sells butter for us now on shares. Old Cuffy, head gardener at Mulberry, and Yella Abram, his assistant, have gone on in the even tenor of their way. Men may come and men may go, but they dig on forever. And they say they mean to, as long as Old Masta is alive. We have green peas, asparagus, lettuce, spinach, new potatoes, and strawberries in abundance, enough for ourselves and plenty to give away to refugees. It is early in May and yet two months since frost. Only the wind was tempered to the shorn lamb in our case. Johnny went over to see Hampton. His cavalry are ordered to reassemble on the twentieth, a little farce to let themselves down easily. They know it is all over. Johnny, smiling serenely, said, the thing is up and forever. Goddard Bailey has presence of mind. Anne Sab left a gold card case which was a terrible oversight among the cards on the drawing-room table. And the Yankee raiders saw it, their eyes glistened. Goddard whispered to her, let them have that guilt thing and slip away and hide the silver. No, shouted a Yanke, you don't fool me that way, here's your old brass thing, don't you stir, fork over that silver. And so they deposited the gold card case in Goddard's hands and stole plated spoons and forks, which had been left out because they were plated. Mrs. Beach says two officers slept at her house. Beach had a pillowcase crammed with silver and jewelry. Spoils of war, they called it. Florid Canty heard an old negro say to his master, When you all had the power, you was good to me, and I'll protect you now. No niggers nor Yankees shall touch you. If you want anything, call for Sambo. I mean, call for Mr. Samuel. That my name, now. May Tenth, a letter from a Pharisee who thanks the Lord she is not as other women are. She need not pray, as the Scotch Parsons did, for a good conceit of herself. She writes, I feel that I will not be ruined, come what may, God will provide for me. But her husband had strengthened the Lord's hands, and for the glory of God, doubtless, invested some thousands of dollars in New York where Confederate moth did not corrupt nor Yankee bummers break through in steel. She went on to tell us, I have had the good things of this world, and I have enjoyed them in their season. But I only held them as steward for God. My bread has been cast upon the waters and will return to me. E. M. Boykin said to-day, We had a right to strike for our independence, and we did strike a bitter blow. They must be proud to have overcome such a foe. I dare look any man into face. There is no humiliation in our position after such a struggle as we made for freedom from the Yankees. He is sanguine. His main idea is joy that he has no negroes to support, and need hire only those he really wants. Stephen Elliott told us that Sherman said to Joe Johnston, Look out for yourself. This agreement only binds the military, not the civil authorities. Is our destruction to begin anew? For a few weeks we have had peace. Sally Reynolds told a short story of a negro pet of Mrs. Kershaw's. A little negro clung to Mrs. Kershaw and begged her to save him. The negro mother, stronger than Mrs. Kershaw, tore him away from her. Mrs. Kershaw wept bitterly. Sally said she saw the mother chasing the child before her as she ran after the Yankees, whipping him at every step. The child yelled like mad, a small rebel blackamore. May 16. We are scattered and stunned. The remnant of heart left alive within us filled with brotherly hate. We sit and wait until the drunken tailor who rules the United States of America issues a proclamation and defines our anomalous position. Such a hue and cry, but whose fault? Everybody is blamed by somebody else. The dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battlefield escape, blame every man who stayed at home and did not fight. I will not stop to hear excuses. There is not one word against those who stood out until the bitter end and stacked muskets at Appomattox. May 18. A feeling of sadness hovers over me now, day and night, which no words of mine can express. There is a chance for plenty of character study in this mulberry house if one only had the heart for it. Colonel Chestnut, now 93, blind and deaf, is apparently as strong as ever and certainly as resolute of will. Partly patriarch, partly grand-seigneur, this old man is of a species that we shall see no more, the last of a race of lordly planters who ruled this southern world, but now a splendid wreck. His manners are unequaled still, but underneath this smooth exterior lies the grip of a tyrant whose will has never been crossed. I will not attempt what Lord Byron says he could not do, but must quote again. Everybody knows a gentleman when he sees him. I have never met a man who could describe one. We have had three very distinct specimens of the genus in this house, three generations of gentlemen, each utterly different from the other, father, son, and grandson. African Scipio walks at Colonel Chestnut's side. He is six feet two, a black Hercules, and as gentle as a dove in all his dealings with the blind old master, who boldly strides forward, striking with his stick to feel where he is going. The Yankees left Scipio unmolested. He told them he was absolutely essential to his old master, and they said, If you want to stay so bad, he must have been good to you always. Scip says he was silent, for it made them mad if you praised your master. Sometimes this old man will stop himself, just as he is going off in a fury, because they try to prevent his attempting some feat impossible in his condition of lost faculties. He will ask gently, I hope that I never say or do anything unseemly. Sometimes I think I am subject to mental aberrations. At every footfall he calls out, Who goes there? If a lady's name is given he uncovers and stands with his hat off until she passes. He still has the old world art of bowing low and gracefully. Colonel Chestnut came of a race that would brook no interference with their own sweet will by man, woman, or devil. But then such manners has he they would clear any man's character if he needed it. Mrs. Chestnut, his wife, used to tell us that when she met him at Princeton in the nineties of the eighteenth century, they called him the Young Prince. He and Mr. John Taylor of Columbia were the first up-country youths whose parents were wealthy enough to send them off to college. Footnote. John Taylor was graduated from Princeton in 1790 and became a planter in South Carolina. He served in Congress from 1806 to 1810, and in the latter year was chosen to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate caused by the resignation of Thomas Sumter. In 1826 he was chosen Governor of South Carolina. He died in 1832. Footnote. When a college was established in South Carolina, Colonel John Chestnut, the father of the aforesaid Young Prince, was on the first board of trustees. Indeed, I may say that since the Revolution of 1776 there has been no convocation of the notables of South Carolina in times of peace and prosperity or of war and adversity in which a representative man of this family has not appeared. The estate has been kept together until now. Mrs. Chestnut said she drove down from Philadelphia on her bridal trip in a chariot in four, a cream-colored chariot with outriders. They have a saying here, on account of the large families with which people are usually blessed, and the subdivision of property consequent upon that fact, besides the tendency of one generation to make and to save, and the next to idle and to squander, that there are rarely more than three generations between shirt-sleeves and shirt-sleeves. But these Chestnuts have secured four. From the John Chestnut, who was driven out from his father's farm in Virginia by the French and Indians, when that father had been killed at Fort Duquesne, to the John Chestnut who saunters along here now the very perfection of a lazy gentleman who cares not to move unless it be for a fight, a dance, or a fox-hunt. Footnote. Fort Duquesne stood at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers. Captain Trent, acting for the Ohio Company, with some Virginia militiamen, began to build this fort in February 1754. On April 17 of the same year, seven hundred Canadians and French forced him to abandon the work. The French then completed the fortress and named it Fort Duquesne. The unfortunate expedition of General Braddock in the summer of 1755 was an attempt to retake the fort, Braddock's defeat occurring eight miles east of it. In 1758 General Forbes marched westward from Philadelphia and secured possession of the place after the French alarmed at his approach, had burned it. Forbes gave it the name of Pittsburgh. Footnote. The first comer of that name to this state was a lad when he arrived after leaving his land in Virginia, and being without fortune otherwise he went into Joseph Kershaw's grocery shop as a clerk, and the Kershaws, I think, so remember that fact that they have it on their coat of arms. Our Johnny, as he was driving me down to Mulberry yesterday, declared himself delighted with the fact that the present Joseph Kershaw had so distinguished himself in our war that they might let the shop of a hundred years ago rest for a while. "'Upon my soul,' cried the cool captain, "'I have a desire to go in there and look at the Kershaw tombstones. I am sure they have put it on their marble tablets that we had an ancestor one day a hundred years ago who was a clerk in their shop.' This clerk became a captain in the revolution. In the second generation the shop had so far sunk that the John Chestnut of that day refused to let his daughter marry a handsome, dissipated Kershaw, and she, a spoiled beauty who could not endure to obey orders when they were disagreeable to her, went up to her room and therein remained, never once coming out of it for forty years. Her father let her have her own way in that. He provided servants to wait upon her and every conceivable luxury that she desired, but neither party would give in. I am, too, thankful that I am an old woman, forty-two my last birthday. There is so little life left in me now to be embittered by this agony. Nonsense, I am a pauper, says my husband, and I am as smiling and as comfortable as ever you saw me. When you have to give up your horses, how then? CHAPTER XXI They say Governor McGrath has absconded and that the Yankees have said, if you have no visible Governor we will send you one. If we had one and they found him they would clap him in prison instantor. The Negroes have flocked to the Yankee squad which has recently come, but they were snubbed, the rampant freedmen. Stay where you are, say the Yankees. We have nothing for you. And they sadly peruse their way. Now that they have picked up that word peruse they use it in season and out. When we met Mrs. Preston's William we asked, where are you going? Perusing my way to Columbia, he answered. When the Yankees said they had no rations for idle Negroes, John Walker answered mildly, this is not at all what we expected. The colored women dressed in their gaudiest array carried bouquets to the Yankees, making the day a jubilee. But in this house there is not the slightest change. Every Negro has known for months that he or she was free, but I do not see one particle of change in their manner. They are, perhaps, more circumspect, polite and quiet, but that is all. Because all goes on in antebellum statu quo. Every day I expect to miss some familiar face, but so far have been disappointed. Mrs. UG we found at the hotel here and we brought her to Bloomsbury. She told us that Jeff Davis was traveling leisurely with his wife twelve miles a day, utterly careless whether he were taken prisoner or not, and that General Hampton had been paroled. Fighting Dick Anderson and Stephen Elliott of Fort Sumter Memory are quite ready to pray for Andy Johnson and to submit to the powers that be. Not so are belligerent clergy. Pray for people when I wish they were dead? cries Reverend Mr. Trapeyer. No, never. I will pray for President Davis till I die. I will do it to my last gasp. My chief is a prisoner, but I am proud of him still. He is a spectacle to gods and men. He will bear himself as a soldier, a patriot, a statesman, a Christian gentleman. He is the martyr of our cause. And I replied with my tears. Look here, taken in woman's clothes, asked Mr. Trapeyer. Rubbish stuff and nonsense. If Jeff Davis has not the pluck of a true man, then there is no courage left on this earth. If he does not die game, I give it up. Something you see was due to Lincoln and the scotch cap that he hid his ugly face with in that express car when he rushed through Baltimore in the night. It is that escapade of their man Lincoln that set them on making up the woman's clothes story about Jeff Davis. Mrs. W. drove up. She too was off for New York to sell four hundred bails of cotton and a square, or something, which paced tremendously in the Central Park region, and to capture and bring home her bell feel who remained north during the war. She knocked at my door. The day was barely dawning. I was in bed, and as I sprang up discovered that my old Confederate nightgown had to be managed, it was so full of wrents. I am afraid I gave undue attention to the sad condition of my gown, but could nowhere see a shawl to drape my figure. She was very kind. In case my husband was arrested and needed funds, she offered me some British securities and bonds. We were very grateful, but we did not accept the loan of money, which would have been almost the same as a gift, so slim was our chance of repaying it. But it was a generous thought on her part. I owned that. I went to our plantation, the Hermitage, yesterday, saw no change, not a soul was absent from his or her post. I said, good-colored folks, when are you going to kick off the traces and be free? In their furious emotional way they swore devotion to us all to their dying day. Just the same the minute they see an opening to better themselves they will move on. William, my husband's foster brother, came up. Well, William, what do you want? asked my husband. Only to look at you, master. It does me good. June 1st. The New York Herald quotes General Sherman as saying, Columbia was burned by Hampton's sheer stupidity. But then who burned everything on the way in Sherman's march to Columbia and in the line of march Sherman took after leaving Columbia? We came for three days of travel over a row that had been laid bare by Sherman's torches. Nothing but smoking ruins was left in Sherman's track. That I saw with my own eyes. No living thing was left, no house, for man or beast. They who burned the countryside for a belt of forty miles, did they not also burn the town? To charge that to Hampton's stupidity is merely an afterthought. This Herald announces that Jeff Davis will be hanged at once, not so much for treason as for his assassination of Lincoln. Stanton, the Herald says, has all the papers in his hands to convict him. The Yankees here say, the black man must go as the red man has gone. This is a white man's country. The Negroes want to run with the hair, but hunt with the hounds. They are charming in their professions to us, but declare that they are to be paid by these blessed Yankees in lands and mules for having been slaves. They were so faithful to us during the war, why should the Yankees reward them, to which the only reply is that it would be by way of punishing rebels. Mrs. Adger saw a Yankee soldier strike a woman, and she prayed God to take him in hand according to his deed. The soldier laughed in her face, swaggered off, stumbled down the steps, and then his revolver went off by the concussion and shot him dead. Footnote. Elizabeth K. Adger, wife of the Reverend John B. Adger, B.D. of Charleston, a distinguished Presbyterian divine, at one time a missionary to Smyrna where he translated the Bible into the Armenian tongue. He was afterward, and before the war, a professor in the theological seminary at Columbia. His wife was a woman of unusual judgment and intelligence, sharing her husband's many hardships and notable experiences in the East. Footnote. The black ball is in motion. Mrs. Desesur's cook shook the dust off her feet and departed from her kitchen to-day, free, she said. The washerwoman is packing to go. Scipio Africanus, the colonel's body-servant, is a soldierly-looking black creature, fit to have delighted the eyes of old Frederick William of Prussia, who liked giants. We asked him how the Yankees came to leave him. Oh, I told them Mosta couldn't do without me know-how, and then I carried them some nice hams that they never could have found they were hid so good. Eben dressed himself in his best and went at a run to meet his Yankee deliverers, so he said. At the gate he met a squad coming in. He had adorned himself with his watch and chain, like the cordage of a ship, with a handful of gaudy seals. He knew the Yankees came to rob white people, but he thought they came to save niggers. Hand over that watch, they said. Minus his fine watch and chain, Eben returned a sadder and a wiser man. He was soon in his shirt-sleeves, whistling at his knife-board. Why, you hear? Why did you come back so soon? He was asked. Well, I thought maybe I'd better stay with all Mosta that give me the watch and not go with them that stole it. The watch was the pride of his life. The iron had entered his soul. Went up to my old house, Kemschatka. The trapeors live there now, and those drawing-rooms where the children played puss in boots, where we have so often danced and sung, but never prayed before, Mr. Trapeer held his prayer meeting. I do not think I ever did as much weeping or as bitter in the same space of time. I let myself go. It did me good. I cried with a will. He prayed that we might have strength to stand up and bear our bitter disappointment, to look on our ruined homes and our desolated country and be strong. And he prayed for the man we elected to be our ruler and guide. We knew that they had put him in a dungeon and in chains. Men watch him day and night. Mr. Davis, while encamped near Irwinsville, Georgia, had been captured on May 10 by a body of Federal cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel Prichard. He was taken to Fortress Monroe and confined there for two years, his release being effected on May 13, 1867, when he was admitted to Bale in the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. The first name on his bail bond being that of Horace Greeley. Infant note. By orders of Andy, the bloody-minded tailor, nobody above the rank of Colonel can take the benefit of the amnesty oath, nobody who owns over twenty thousand dollars or who has assisted the Confederates. And now ye rich men, howl, for your misery has come upon you. You are beyond the outlaw camping outside. Howl Cobb and RMT Hunter have been arrested. Our turn will come next, maybe. A Damocles sword hanging over a house does not conduce to a pleasant life. June 12, Andy, made lord of all by the madman Booth, says, destruction only to the wealthy classes. Better teach the Negroes to stand alone before you break up all they leaned on, oh Yankees. After all, the number who possess over twenty thousand dollars are very few. Andy has shattered some fond hopes. He denounces northern men who came south to espouse our cause. They may not take the life-giving oath. My husband will remain quietly at home. He has done nothing that he had not a right to do, nor anything that he is ashamed of. He will not fly from his country, nor hide anywhere in it. These are his words. He has a huge volume of Macaulay, which seems to absorb him. Slyly I slipped Silvio Pelico in his way. He looked at the title and moved it aside. Oh, said I, I only wanted you to refresh your memory as to a prisoner's life and what a despotism can do to make its captives happy. Two weddings. In Camden, Ellen Douglas Ancrum to Mr. Lee, engineer and architect, a clever man which is the best investment now. In Columbia, Sally Hampton and John Chavis Haskell, the bridegroom, a brave one-armed soldier. A wedding to be, Lou McCord's. And Mrs. McCord is going about frantically looking for eggs to mix and make into wedding-cake and finding none. She now drives the funniest little one-mule vehicle. I have been ill since I last wrote in this journal. Serena's letter came. She says they have been visited by bushwhackers, the ruffs that always follow in the wake of an army. My sister Kate they forced back against the wall. She had Katie, the baby, in her arms. Miller, the brave boy, clung to his mother, though he could do no more. They tried to pour Brandy down her throat. They knocked Mary down with the butt end of a pistol. In Serena they struck with an open hand, leaving the mark on her cheek for weeks. Mr. Christopher Hampton says in New York people have been simply intoxicated with the fumes of their own glory. Military prowess is a new wrinkle of delight to them. They are mad with pride that, ten to one, they could, for five years hard fighting, prevail over us, handicapped as we were, with a majority of aliens, quasi-fos, and negro slaves whom they tried to seduce, shut up with us. They pay us the kind of respectful fear the British meted out to Napoleon when they sent him off with Sir Hudson Lowe to St. Helena, the lone rock by the sea, to eat his heart out where he could not alarm them more. Of course the Yankees know and say they were too many for this, and yet they would all the same prefer not to try us again. Would Wellington be willing to take the chances of Waterloo once more with Grouchy, Blusher, and all that left to haphazard? Wigfall said to Old Cameron in 1861, Then you will a subtler be, and profits shall accrue. Simon Cameron became Secretary of War in Lincoln's administration on March 4, 1861. On January 11, 1862, he resigned and was made Minister to Russia. End of footnote. Christopher Hampton says that in some inscrutable way in the world north everybody has contrived to amass fabulous wealth by this war. There are two classes of vociferous sufferers in this community. One, those who say, If people would only pay me what they owe me. Two, those who say, If people would only let me alone I cannot pay them. I could stand it if I had anything with which to pay debts. Now we belong to both classes. Heavens, the sums people owe us and will not or cannot pay, would settle all our debts ten times over and leave us in easy circumstances for life. But they will not pay. How can they? We are shut in here, turned with our faces to a dead wall. No males. A letter is sometimes brought by a man on horseback, rolling through the wilderness made by Sherman. All railroads have been destroyed and the bridges are gone. We are cut off from the world, here to eat out our hearts. Yet from my window I look out on many a gallant youth and maiden fare. The street is crowded and it is a gay site. Camden is thronged with refugees from the low country and here they despot themselves. They call the walk in front of Bloomsbury the Boulevard. Each lying tells us that poor Sandhill Millie Trimlin is dead, and that as a witch she had been denied Christian burial. Three times she was buried in consecrated ground in different churchyards, and three times she was dug up by a superstitious horde who put her out of their holy ground. Where her poor old ill-used bones are lying now I do not know. I hope her soul is faring better than her body. She was a good, kind creature, who I supposed to be a witch. But each lying could not elucidate. Everybody in our walk of life gave Millie a helping hand. She was a perfect specimen of the Sandhill-Tackey race, sometimes called country-crackers. Her skin was yellow and leathery, even the whites of her eyes were bilious in color. She was stumpy, strong and lean, hard-featured, horny-fisted. Never were people so aided in every way as these Sandhillers. How do they remain Sandhillers from generation to generation? Why should Millie never have bettered her condition? My grandmother lent a helping hand to her grandmother. My mother did her best for her mother, and I am sure the so-called witch could never complain of me. As long as I can remember, gangs of these Sandhill women traipseed in with baskets to be filled by charity, ready to carry away anything they could get. All are made on the same pattern, more or less alike. They were treated as friends and neighbors, not as beggars. They were asked in to take seats by the fire, and there they sat for hours, stony-eyed, silent, wearing out human endurance and politeness. But their husbands and sons, whom we never saw, were citizens and voters. When patience was at its last ebb, they would open their mouths and loudly demand whatever they had come to seek. One called Judy Bradley, a one-eyed varago who played the fiddle at all the Sandhill dances and fandangos, made a deep impression on my youthful mind. Her list of requests was always rather long, and once my grandmother grew restive and actually hesitated. Woman, do you mean to let me starve? She cried furiously. My grandmother then attempted a meek lecture as to the duty of earning one's bread. Judy squared her arms akimbo and answered, and pray, who made you a judge of the world? Lord, Lord, if I had a note I had to stand all this jaw I wouldn't have took your old things. But she did take them and came afterward again and again. June 27th. An awful story from Sumter. An old gentleman who thought his son dead or in a Yankee prison heard someone try the front door. It was about midnight, and these are squally times. He called out, What is that? There came no answer. For a while he heard someone trying to open a window and he fired. The house was shaken by a fall. Then after a long time of dead silence he went round the house to see if his shot had done any harm, and found his only son bathed in his own blood on his father's doorstep. The son was just back from a Yankee prison, one of his companions said, and had been made deaf by cold and exposure. He did not hear his father hail him. He had tried to get into the house in the same old way he used to employ when a boy. My sister-in-law in tears of rage and despair, her servants all gone to a big meeting at Mulberry, though she had made every appeal against their going. Send them adrift, someone said. They do not obey you or serve you, they only live on you. It would break her heart to part with one of them. But that sort of thing will soon ride itself. They will go off to better themselves. We have only to cease paying wages, and that is easy, for we have no money. July 4. Saturday I was in bed with one of my worst headaches. Occasionally there would come a sob, and I thought of my sister insulted and my little sweet Williams. Another of my beautiful Columbia quartet had rough experiences. A raider asked the plucky little girl Lizzie Hamilton for a ring which she wore. You shall not have it, she said. The man put a pistol to her head, saying, take it off, hand it to me, or I will blow your brains out. Blow away, said she. The man laughed and put down his pistol, remarking, you knew I would not hurt you. Of course, I knew you dared not shoot me, even Sherman would not stand that. There was talk of the Negroes where the Yankees had been, Negroes who flocked to them and showed them where silver and valuables had been hid by the white people. Ladies-maids dressed themselves in their mistresses gowns before the owner's faces and walked off. Now before this everyone had told me how kind, faithful, and considerate the Negroes had proven. I am sure, after hearing these tales, the fidelity of my own servants shines out brilliantly. I had taken their conduct too much as a matter of course. In the afternoon I had some business on our place, the hermitage. John drove me down. Our people were all at home, quiet, orderly, respectful, and at their usual work. In point of fact things looked unchanged. There was nothing to show that any one of them had even seen the Yankees, or knew that there was one in existence. July 26th. I do not write often now, not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear, and who I dwell upon these things. Colonel Chestnut, poor old man, is worse, grows more restless. He seems to be wild with homesickness. He wants to be at Mulberry. And there he cannot see the mighty giants of the forest, the huge old widespreading oaks. But he says he feels that he is there so soon as he hears the carriage rattling across the bridge at the Beaver Dam. I am reading French with Johnny, anything to keep him quiet. We gave a dinner to his company, the small remnant of them, at Mulberry House. About twenty idle Negroes, trained servants, came without leave or license and assisted, so there was no expense. They gave their time and labor for a good day's feeding. I think they loved to be at the old place. Then I went up to nurse Kate Withers. That lovely girl, barely eighteen, died of typhoid fever. Tanny wanted his sweet little sister to have a dress for Mary Boykin's wedding where she was to be one of the bridesmaids. So Tanny took his horses, rode one and led the other, thirty miles in the broiling sun to Columbia, where he sold the lead horse and came back with a roll of Swiss muslin. As he entered the door he saw Kate lying there dying. She died praying that she might die. She was weary of earth and wanted to be at peace. I saw her die and saw her put in her coffin. No words of mine can tell how unhappy I am. Six young soldiers, her friends, were her pallbearers. As they marched out with that burden, sad were their faces. Princess Bright Eyes writes, Our soldier boys returned, want us to continue our weekly dances. Another maiden fair in Dites. Here we have a Yankee garrison. We are told the officers find this the dullest place they were ever in. They want the ladies to get up some amusement for them. They also want to get into society. From Isabella in Columbia. General Hampton is home again. He looks crushed. How can he be otherwise? His beautiful home is in ruins. And ever present with him must be the memory of the death tragedy which closed forever the eyes of his glorious boy, Preston. Now there strikes up the serenade to General Ames, the Yankee commander, by a military band, of course. Your last letters have been of the meagerest. What is the matter? August 2nd. Dr. Boykin and John Witherspoon were talking of a nation in mourning, of blood poured out like rain on the battlefields. For what? Never let me hear that the blood of the brave has been shed in vain. No, it sends a cry down through all time. End of Chapter 21. End of a Diary from Dixie by Mary Chestnut.